Evolving Software Licencing Models

So Oracle is one of the first big SW companies seriously contemplating moving away from paying for lisences. Simply pay for support in a nice steady stream and no one needs to get hurt. I happen to agree that this is where the enterprise software market is going but I believe there will be short term pain for all public SW companies that try and make a switch.

First Wall Street will definitely not like turning off any revenue stream and it will breed insecurity about the companies prospects. Never good. Second, any change in how a company charges for its services (particularly big companies) lets its clients step back and consider if all those checks they have been writing make sense. This is particularly true of major infrastructure purchases like Oracle. So many will decide open source options like MySQL still are not up to snuff, but how many will reconsider?

It really feels inevitable long term to shift to a quasi-services model, particularly as the open source options get better and better. As inevitable as it may be it will not be easy.